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Topic: The Daily Sheet May - August 2018 (Read 2236 times)

Sometimes, it's stil hard to believe that Ang Lee made a Hulk movie. It's even harder to believe he did so in the wake of Spider-Man's box office success a year earlier. After all, giving Lee the freedom to be this unconventional and this pensive with the material was like trying to make fast food with foie gras.

It might not be acknowledged as an MCU movie, but there are ideas in Lee's Hulk that are explored further in Louis Leterrier's semi-reboot and the fact that the stories interlock together (Bruce flees to isolation at the end of one and starts the other still there) suggests it deserves consideration as a sort of MCU prelude at least. And with Infintiy War on the way, it's definitely part of the genesis of the franchise.

It's also one of the most interesting comic book movies ever made and exploring it again from the privileged position of having seen ten years of MCU movies is even more insightful. So it's a worthy movie to focus on in that respect too. The real question is: is it still as bad as everyone seems to suggest it was...?

After James Miller retired from the Austin Police Department, he took up guitar, strumming the instrument at a nearby musicians' bar, trying to put together a jazz band and getting together at the house of David Spencer, a 32-year-old neighbour and a saxophonist who shared his passion. In September, 2015, after a night of music and drinking at Spencer's house, Miller testified, his younger neighbour made a fatal mistake: He moved in for a kiss.

"We were playing back and forth and everything, and I just let him know - Hey, I'm not gay," Miller, 69, said in an affidavit, according to Austin NBC-affiliate KXAN. "We been playing. We're musicians and all that kind of stuff, but I'm not a gay guy. Then it seemed like everything was all right, and everything was fine. When I got ready to go - it seemed like [expletive] just started happening."

Then, he said, he pulled out a knife and stabbed Spencer two times. Miller showed up at a police station a few hours later, at 3:45 am, according to a police report obtained by the Austin American-Statesman: "I think I killed someone. . . . I stabbed him."

A movie about love between two women has been banned in Kenya, ahead of its premiere at international film festival Cannes. Kenya's Film and Classification Board (KFCB) said Thursday "Rafiki" was banned because of intent to "promote lesbianism," in the country.

"The film has been restricted due to its homosexual theme and clear intent to promote lesbianism in Kenya contrary to the law," a statement from the board said. It added that the film should not be distributed or shown anywhere in the country and anyone found with a copy would be in breach of the law.

Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, who directed the movie, took to Twitter to express her disappointment, saying,"We believe adult Kenyans are mature and discerning enough to watch local content but their right has been denied.""Rafiki" is Kenya's first LGBT-themed movie and makes history as the first Kenyan movie to premiere at Cannes, with its debut appearance next month. Inspired by the 2007 Caine Prize winning short story "Jambula Tree" by Ugandan writer Monica Arac Nyeko, "Rafiki" which means 'friend' in Swahili is the story of friendship and tender love that grows between two young women amidst family and political pressures.

In early April, the LGBTQ publication Queerty ran a piece called “Why does bisexuality still make us so uncomfortable?” in which the author, Jeremy Helligar, describes the moment that a date told him he was bisexual. “I told him it didn’t matter to me, but I lied,” Helligar writes, explaining that the stereotype of bisexuals having “more options” made him nervous.

Although Helligar says he’s not the type to “side-eye” bisexual people and that he accepts them “in theory,” he is, in reality, reproducing biphobic rhetoric that many bisexuals hear on a nearly daily basis.

Biphobia (the fear and dislike of bisexual people and others who have the potential to be attracted to more than one gender) has been studied for decades. Used by bisexual activists since the 1970s, the term was brought into prominence in 1992 by the researcher Kathleen Bennett, who talked about the “denigration of bisexuality as a valid life choice.” In 2002, Patrick Mulick and Lester Wright developed the “Biphobia Scale,” a set of thirty questions which they used to measure negativity towards bisexual people. Mulick and Wright were the first researchers to confirm that bisexual people experienced “double discrimination”: that is, negative behavior based on their sexual orientation from gay and lesbian people as well as from straight people.

Indie rock lyrics crooned through the speakers of a downtown coffee shop while College of Charleston students crammed for their finals. Lee Anne Leland had just left work, where she changed out of her construction attire and into a red, long-sleeved dress. Purple eyeshadow covered her eyelids. Bangles jangled on her wrists. A young man approached the line and accidentally bumped into her.

"Excuse me, sir," he said.

Leland could have turned. The transgender woman could have corrected him with, "Ma'am." But she chooses her battles, she said. She reserved her energy for "Trans Talk: Uncensored" — a panel discussion taking place this Sunday at Commonhouse Aleworks, a brewery near Park Circle in North Charleston. Leland was born male, but from the age of 5, identified as a girl. Leland will be one of five panelists who plan to cast political correctness and their own comfort aside in an effort give people a chance to ask whatever questions they have about gender identity.

Janelle Monáe has long been private about her personal life, but the multi-hyphenate artist opened up about her sexuality for the first time in her new Rolling Stone cover story.

"Being a queer black woman in America, someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker," she told the magazine. The 32-year-old singer and actress clarified that she initially identified as bisexual, "but then later I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with too.' I'm open to learning more about who I am."

GLAAD, an organization supporting LGBTQ+ representation in the media, explains: "While being bisexual means being attracted to more than one gender, being pansexual means being attracted to all gender identities, or attracted to people regardless of gender."

Former YSA bishop and Utah businessman Richard Ostler served a mission in England for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints almost 40 years ago. Little did he know at that time, he would be reunited decades later with one of his fellow missionaries — who happened to be a priest, gay and married.

“He was living out of the circle of our doctrine, but he’s not living out of the circle of our love and our concern and our interest,” Ostler said during a presentation at Utah State University on Tuesday night. “That was very helpful to me as I started to get a little reprogrammed with LGBTQ.”

Ostler gave his hour-plus speech on campus, but it was not sponsored by the university or the LDS Church. In fact, that was one of the points Ostler made at the beginning of his remarks. “I’m not here representing the Mormon church. I’m not here representing Utah State. I’m just here speaking as an individual as I’ve come to understand better LGBTQ,” Ostler said. “Thank you for being willing to engage on this.”

Ostler became interested in LGBTQ issues after learning of a gay teen’s suicide in his community.

Years ago, Brokies congregated in Spain to see the opera version of Brokeback Mountain. The image to the left features the stars of that production, Tom Randle and Daniel Okulitch. It was wondered if the opera would go on the road, and appear in the United States. It was later confirmed that NYC would see the opera, but the date was not determined.

The libretto for Brokeback Mountain was written by Annie Proulx herself, following a period of persuasion to take on a medium she had never attempted. The wisdom of such a collaboration was borne out by the results: in language distilled to that which can be sung onstage, the story’s details and themes remain intact, but the method of its telling required significant changes.

The London stage production of Brokeback Mountain is officially underway. The show, which was first announced in 2015, is based on the short story of the same name, which was later adapted into a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

We all know the story by now. In 1963, two young men, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a remote grazing range on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Unexpectedly, alone in the wilderness, they form an intense emotional and physical bond that will change their lives forever. And over the next twenty years, as their separate lives play out through marriages, children and dead-end jobs, they long to be together, back on Brokeback Mountain, in a place where there are no secrets, only each other.

The show's official Twitter account posted an image of the script, revealing that production is underway.

We are opening this week's TDS in a different way. I was contacted by forum member foreverinawe, and he had an idea for this week's issue. He has a topic that he felt was worthy of discussion, so he asked if we could feature it in TDS, and then have discussion moved to the "Respond to the Daily Sheet" thread.

Did you ever have an unexpected event in your life that showed you how wonderfullife could be, something that you have treasured ever since? Not the romantic loveof your life (although that might make a good topic later), but something relatedto your external world --

• finding an irreplaceable long lost photograph • rounding a corner coming face to face with your favorite celebrity... • turning on your radio at the end of a day of worry and struggle, and there is Barbara Bonney singing Schubert's Ave Maria (q.v.)....

We all have them. I will post my own on May 19, which is the anniversary of my happy experience.

Please share one of yours with us. Please post it in the Respond to the Daily Sheet thread:

Annie Proulx has been named winner of the 2018 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. The honor recognizes an experienced writer whose body of work has “told us something new about the American experience.”

Proulx, 82, is best known as the author of the 1993 novel “The Shipping News,” which won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and the short story “Brokeback Mountain,” which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie in 2005. Last year, she received the National Book Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Proulx has given us monumental sagas and keen-eyed, skillfully wrought stories,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said in a statement released Wednesday. “Throughout her writing, she succeeds in capturing the wild, woolly heart of America, from its screwball wit to its every last detail. She is an American original.” The selection, by Hayden, was based on nominations from previous winners, other authors and literary critics.

“I disbelieved this honor at first,” Proulx told The Washington Post via email, “but when the news finally sank in, I was both somewhat shaken and delighted to learn my work was held in esteem by our national library.”

Pulse nightclub shooting survivor Luis Javier Ruiz joined a few dozen others at a so-called Freedom March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday where those in attendance celebrated no longer identifying as gay or transgender.

“I don’t want to tell everyone it’s a ‘gay-to-straight’ thing because God is not calling me to that," Ruiz told NBC News. "I feel that I want to live in a life of purity. I feel that through loving Christ, he will walk me out of any situation. I love the LGBTQ community, I love my family. There’s no hate here, there’s love.”

Ruiz, who said he no longer identifies as gay and denied going to conversion therapy, promoted his decision to attend the event on Facebook. That post, which has since been taken down, led to threats and the loss of many friends, Ruiz said.

A few dozen people in total showed up at the event on a cloudy Saturday celebrating "freedom from homosexual/transgender lifestyles by the grace and power of Jesus Christ," according to the march.

This past weekend at the box office was particularly gay. Love, Simon was still playing at theaters across America, and it was joined by Disobedience — which tells the story of two women finding love and comfort with each other in an Orthodox Jewish community — and Duck Butter, an indie dramedy about a pair of millennial ladies who endeavor to pack an entire relationship’s worth of experience into a single 24-hour stretch. (Not to mention, the Marvel big bad Thanos took over over Earth in hopes of obtaining a collection of fine jewelry.)

In celebration of all this queerness, Vulture has assembled a list of 40 essential lesbian love stories from around the world: movies that will make you laugh, make you cry, and then make you cry so violently you want to throw up. We’re exaggerating, of course — only some of these movies end in horrible tragedy. But all of them will hit you right square in the heart.

Earlier this month, Kehlani and Demi Lovato concluded the US leg of their Tell Me You Love Me tour by kissing on a rotating stage bed. Mainstream pop is, of course, no stranger to demonstrations of Sapphic affection – growing up, MTV gave us Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” with all its “cherry chapstick” and “experimental games”, while Madonna and Britney shared an iconic kiss during their VMA performance – but as Lovato giggled over Kehlani, pushing her over and grinding into her, something felt different. In the past, those artists would ‘play gay’ for shock value. Here, both artists are actually queer – and they’re not alone. Today, bisexual musicians are more visible than ever in pop, with new artists writing wistful love songs using same-sex pronouns and chart-topping stars waving pride flags on-stage.

Last year, Halsey’s “Strangers” – featuring fellow bisexual artist Lauren Jauregui – became the first female same-sex love song to make the Top 40. Janelle Monáe’s new album Dirty Computer featured music videos comically strutting between male and female love interests, while Harry Styles recently previewed a song with lyrics about “messing about” with both boys and girls. Even Eminem, who spent much of his career portraying gay men as lecherous sex pests (“Pants or dress, hate f**s? The answer’s yes / Homophobic? Nah, you’re just heterophobic,” he rapped on “Criminal”), recently claimed to be using Grindr, although it was hard to ascertain whether this was a weak attempt at humour or not.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) is expected to sign a bill in the coming weeks that would ban discrimination in the state based on gender identity.

The New Hampshire Union Leader reported that the Republican-controlled state Senate passed the legislation last week. The bill would make it illegal to discriminate against transgender people in matters of housing, employment and public accommodations.

"These laws are necessary because of the pervasive discrimination that transgender people face at work, at home and in public. I’m not transgender, but 10, 20 years ago, I experienced these discriminations," said state Sen. Dan Innis (R), who is gay.

The law will go into effect 30 days after Sununu signs it. The public accommodations provision drew some pushback from Republican lawmakers. That part of the law provides protections for transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

Sport has historically been a space for white cisgendered men to compete against each other. But over the last century, this has slowly changed. Black and brown athletes have broken down racial barriers one by one, though it’s still possible in 2018 to have the cops called on you if you are black and playing golf too slowly. It took a federal law in the United States ― Title IX, passed in 1972 ― to begin to repair the vast disparity in athletic opportunities and resources between men’s/boy’s and women’s/girl’s sports, and we still have a long way to go.

Over the last few years we have seen the visibility of transgender, intersex and non-binary athletes ― all those who push against the rigid boundaries of “male” and “female” ― rise, though the resistance to their participation remains immense.

At the intersection sits one of the best female middle-distance runners ever, South Africa’s Caster Semenya who’s been under the scrutiny of the International Association of Athletics Federations since 2009 for having what some consider an “unfair advantage” over the competition.

The Abilene Allies group hosted two events last weekend to show support for LGBT students. Led by Abilene pastor Damon Parker, the group invited LGBT students to a dance last Friday night at the Swenson House.

“The purpose of the dance was mostly to have the community of Abilene show support for our LGBTQ students,” Parker said, “and to show we’re glad you’re here in Abilene at school and as a part of our town.” Gabby Thompson, co-president of Voice, a student LGBT peer-support group, said about 30 students attended the dance. Some students brought dates, while others came with friend groups, Thompson said.

Years ago, Brokies congregated in Spain to see the opera version of Brokeback Mountain. The image to the left features the stars of that production, Tom Randle and Daniel Okulitch. It was wondered if the opera would go on the road, and appear in the United States. It was later confirmed that NYC would see the opera, but the date was not determined.

The libretto for Brokeback Mountain was written by Annie Proulx herself, following a period of persuasion to take on a medium she had never attempted. The wisdom of such a collaboration was borne out by the results: in language distilled to that which can be sung onstage, the story’s details and themes remain intact, but the method of its telling required significant changes.

The London stage production of Brokeback Mountain is officially underway. The show, which was first announced in 2015, is based on the short story of the same name, which was later adapted into a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

We all know the story by now. In 1963, two young men, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a remote grazing range on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Unexpectedly, alone in the wilderness, they form an intense emotional and physical bond that will change their lives forever. And over the next twenty years, as their separate lives play out through marriages, children and dead-end jobs, they long to be together, back on Brokeback Mountain, in a place where there are no secrets, only each other.

The show's official Twitter account posted an image of the script, revealing that production is underway.

It is a story that has captivated readers since it was first published in The New Yorker more than 20 years ago. Moviegoers were equally entranced by the film that Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers described as “unmissable and unforgettable… a landmark film and a triumph for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.” And now opera fans have the rare opportunity to experience Brokeback Mountain in its U.S. premiere at New York City Opera (May 31 – June 4).

The heartbreaking story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist takes place on the harsh terrain of Wyoming’s fictional Brokeback Mountain. Depicted with sweep vistas underscored by a melodic, lyrical score by Gustavo Santaolalla, the film’s visual poeticism veered from author Annie Proulx’s more bleak interpretation of rural America. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer returned to her source material to write the libretto for composer Charles Wuorinen’s score.

Originally commissioned in 2008 by then General Director Gerard Mortier, the opera was never produced in the U.S., instead, making its world premiere at Madrid’s Teatro Real. The New York City Opera production originated at the Salzburg State Theater and will feature a 26-piece orchestra. The production is the company’s second installment in its annual Pride Series, which is gaining national attention for pushing the boundaries in a typically conservative art form.

Comic John Bishop told how was ‘massively proud’ of his gay son as he gave a touching speech at the NatWest British LGBT Awards. The Scouse funnyman was named Ally of the Year at the ceremony in London. And he moved the audience with his powerful acceptance speech about his family and gay pride.

“I was so pleased to be nominated,” said John, who attended the awards at the Marriott Hotel in Grosvenor Square with his wife Melanie and sons Joe, Luke and Daniel. “I brought my whole family, my wife and my three sons who I love and I am massively proud of. “Like all parents we have problems with them. “One of my sons has a tattoo on his ankle that was meant to be Africa but looks like Australia, one of my sons mumbles and one of my sons is a gay man."

“I’ll be honest, there’s been loads of nights when me and my wife have sat up and worried and worried and worried. What are we going to do if he doesn’t stop mumbling?”

As the crowd laughed and applauded the joke, John also called for same-sex marriage to be legalised in Northern Ireland, reports the Mirror .

A Texas teacher has filed a lawsuit alleging she was put on leave and transferred after showing her class a photograph of her future wife. Stacy Bailey has twice been named teacher of the year at Charlotte Anderson elementary school in Arlington, Texas. Last August, at the start of a new school year, she put on a getting-to-know-you slideshow. It included pictures of her family and friends, including a woman Bailey described as her “future wife”.

Later in the week, according to a court filing, Bailey was told a parent had complained about the art teacher promoting a “homosexual agenda”. According to the lawsuit, a school district official met Bailey and told her: “You can’t promote your lifestyle in the classroom.” The suit says Bailey responded: “We plan to get married. When I have a wife, I should be able to say this is my wife without fear of harassment. When I state that, it is a fact about my life, not a political statement.” The official is quoted as replying: “Well right now it kind of is.”

A Rita Ora track featuring Cardi B, Bebe Rexha and Charli XCX has been accused of exploiting bisexuality by several LGBTQ musicians. The chorus of Girls goes: "Sometimes, I just wanna kiss girls/Red wine, I just wanna kiss girls". Singers including Kehlani, Hayley Kiyoko and Shura argue the song belittles same-sex relationships. Newsbeat has asked Rita Ora's management for a comment, but they've not responded yet.

Rita has, however, given an interview to People Magazine in which she said she wants the song to be a bisexual anthem - but when asked whether she considers herself bisexual, she was less clear. "If people look at it like that, it's very narrow-minded and I don't think that's what this record is. I don't think that that even matters", she said.

Singer and actress Hayley Kiyoko was one of the first to speak out against the track.

The Trump administration decided to withdraw protections for transgender inmates that allowed them to use facilities corresponding with their gender identity, according to a report from BuzzFeed News. A notice posted Friday evening revealed modifications to previous Obama-era policies that attempted to protect transgender inmates from sexual abuse and assault.

According to the revised notice, the Bureau of Prisons will be using “biological sex” instead of gender identity to assign the housing, bathrooms, and other facilities of transgender prisoners. “The designation to a facility of the inmate’s identified gender would be appropriate only in rare cases,” the new Transgender Offender Manual reads.

The policy effectively places transgender protections on a back burner under the premise that officials must “consider whether placement would threaten the management and security of the institution and/or pose a risk to other inmates in the institution.”

Non-Binary is an umbrella term which can refer to a range of identities on the gender spectrum. Here's the lowdown on a few of the terms which relate to the contestants on new Channel 4 reality show Genderquake.

The gender binary is the idea that there are only two possible genders - male and female. Intersex people (hermaphrodites) and those born with extra X or Y chromosomes could also be classed as binary genders.

Anyone who identifies as non-binary or genderqueer therefore views their gender as being beyond these confinements. Non-binary people may also identify as transgender which means their internal experience of gender differs from the one they were assigned at birth. Genderqueer has a similar meaning to non-binary but can sometimes cause offence if it is viewed as a transphobic slur.

Every student has an identity, the accepting and understanding of which has been a major focus for one particular graduating student.

For the past year Alyssa Palmer has served as the president for Identity, the Saint Rose club which promotes awareness, tolerance, and understanding of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. This involves providing a safe space for students who are members of the LGBTQ+ community and their allies on campus.

As a sophomore, Palmer knew she wanted to make a change within the community, especially wanting to get rid of the stereotype that Identity is just “the gay club.” As an ally, Palmer did not want to lose sight of this aspect of the LGBTQ+ community. “We are Identity,” she said. “I want Identity to be known in a positive way.”

Years ago, Brokies congregated in Spain to see the opera version of Brokeback Mountain. The image to the left features the stars of that production, Tom Randle and Daniel Okulitch. It was wondered if the opera would go on the road, and appear in the United States. It was later confirmed that NYC would see the opera, but the date was not determined.

The libretto for Brokeback Mountain was written by Annie Proulx herself, following a period of persuasion to take on a medium she had never attempted. The wisdom of such a collaboration was borne out by the results: in language distilled to that which can be sung onstage, the story’s details and themes remain intact, but the method of its telling required significant changes.

The London stage production of Brokeback Mountain is officially underway. The show, which was first announced in 2015, is based on the short story of the same name, which was later adapted into a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

We all know the story by now. In 1963, two young men, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a remote grazing range on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Unexpectedly, alone in the wilderness, they form an intense emotional and physical bond that will change their lives forever. And over the next twenty years, as their separate lives play out through marriages, children and dead-end jobs, they long to be together, back on Brokeback Mountain, in a place where there are no secrets, only each other.

The show's official Twitter account posted an image of the script, revealing that production is underway.

We are still learning new things about Heath Ledger — 10 years after his tragic passing. Celebrity photographer Ben Watts shared never-before-seen photos of the late actor, who died from an accidental drug overdose at age 28 in January 2008, ahead of an exhibit he’s having this summer of photos he took of the late movie star. The black-and-white shots, shared Thursday on Instagram, showed the Brokeback Mountain and Dark Knight star DJ’ing a party at his home in Los Angeles.

Maybe you were aware that the Australian actor liked to control the tunes — not too long ago, Sienna Miller told us a story about Heath DJ’ing Venice boat rides while filming Casanova — but Watts recalled that Ledger “also liked chess & arm wrestling.”

Model Helena Christensen, who was romantically linked to Ledger in the media but always maintained that they were just friends, commented on Watt’s post that Ledger liked to play chess with her son, who’s now 18. An old People magazine article talks about Ledger being part of the Washington Square Park chess world in NYC, where he’d play in the early mornings for a few dollars. He had told MTV.com, “I’ve played since I was a kid. I play at least one game a day.”

A survivor of clerical sexual abuse has said Pope Francis told him that God had made him gay and loved him, in arguably the most strikingly accepting comments about homosexuality to be uttered by the leader of the Roman Catholic church.

Juan Carlos Cruz, who spoke privately with the pope two weeks ago about the abuse he suffered at the hands of one of Chile’s most notorious paedophiles, said the issue of his sexuality had arisen because some of the Latin American country’s bishops had sought to depict him as a pervert as they accused him of lying about the abuse.

“He told me, ‘Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter. God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care. The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are,’” Cruz told Spanish newspaper El País.

Now 87, Fernando Karadima, the man who abused Cruz, was found guilty of abuse by the Vatican in 2011.

Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for President Jennifer Aniston. The actress will be taking on the role of President of the United States for an upcoming Netflix movie, the streaming platform announced on Friday. Aniston, 49, will star opposite comedian Tig Notaro, 47, as Beverly and Kasey Nicholson, with Aniston playing America’s first female and lesbian president.

The movie, titled First Ladies, is co-written by Notaro and her wife Stephanie Allynne and produced by the two along with Will Ferrel and Adam McKay, among others.

This is the second movie Aniston has in line with Netflix. She’s also reuniting with Adam Sandler for the ensemble comedy Murder Mystery. The movie follows Sandler’s character, a cop, who finally takes his wife (Aniston) on a trip to Europe turned tragic when they find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation on a luxurious yacht.

How Bisexuality on TV Evolved From a Favorite Punchline to a Vital Storyline

I was told so many lies about what being bisexual means that it took me 27 years to come out as bisexual myself. Friends shrugged that bisexual people just couldn’t make up their minds. Family members insisted that being gay or straight was one thing, but anything in between just didn’t make sense. And in a crushing blow, my beloved escape, television, insisted over and over that someone who might like men and women was a confused joke at best, and a slutty sinner at worst.

For decades, TV had no idea what to do with anyone whose sexuality fell outside a gay-straight dichotomy. As Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw put it in 2000, many thought bisexuality was just “a layover on the way to Gaytown.” As 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon said through an eyeroll in 2009, “bisexuality ... is just something they invented in the ’90s to sell hair products.” Or more simply, as the supposed queer utopia of The L Word dismissed it in 2006, bisexuality “is gross.”

The derision and relative lack of representation is even more jarring when you remember that there are more people who identify as bisexual-plus — a spectrum that includes bisexuality, pansexuality, queerness, and everything in between — than those who identify as lesbian or gay combined.

As grown-ups start to shop for summer reading, school kids are laying into the titles they’ll read for next fall’s Oregon Battle of the Books, or OBOB. It’s a statewide competition, in which kids read from a list of about dozen books, curated by a team of librarians. They duke it out answering Jeopardy!-style questions about the books.

One of the books contenders will read this summer is unlike any before it.

The novel “George” by Alex Gino is the first OBOB selection to feature a transgender protagonist. Gino’s fourth-grade heroine thinks of herself as Melissa, and the narrative identifies her with female pronouns throughout, but she’s carrying the male name she was born with and hiding feelings she can only let loose when she’s totally alone.

Hyposexuality may not be a phrase you’re familiar with - but its symptoms are ubiquitous. The terminology is used by sexual health professionals to describe a condition characterized by decreased libido which can be experienced at different degrees and time periods for various reasons.

It is occasionally wrongly aligned with asexuality - whereby someone does not experience sexual attraction towards others. The key difference between the two is that asexuality is an orientation whereas hyposexuality is a diagnosis.

“Asexuality is an identity formed around community and personal experience,” explained a spokesperson for the LGBT Foundation, “while hyposexuality is a diagnosis given to people who are not asexual but are experiencing difficulty achieving sexual arousal.”

People experiencing hyposexuality may feel distressed and upset as a result of the condition, which may be secondary to other sexual dysfunctions such as anorgasmia - the inability to orgasm; dyspareunia - painful intercourse; and erectile dysfunction.

On Thursday, May 10 Aqua Foundation for Women held their 7th annual Ally Awards at the Bacardi building in Coral Gables. Aqua Ally Awards is an event to celebrate and honor allies who stand with the LGBT community in the fight for equality. Although the term ally is often used in the context of conflict, it is an appropriate action driven noun bestowed upon one who supports the LGBT community in the fight for equality and empowerment.

Robin Schwartz, the Managing Director of Aqua Foundation, explained “Sometimes it is straight allies whose voices are heard the loudest by non-LGBTQ folks.” Schwartz said allies are the largest part of the greater community so having their support in the fight for equality is vital.

“Our movement's goal is for LBT women to have the same opportunities as everyone else and to have our voices heard as an equal part of the greater community.” Aqua Foundation is heavily involved in work that empowers LBT women through scholarships/mentorships, programs for the LGBT homeless youth, initiatives for the transgender community and creating spaces for LGBT families.

Years ago, Brokies congregated in Spain to see the opera version of Brokeback Mountain. It was wondered if the opera would go on the road, and appear in the United States. It was later confirmed that NYC would see the opera, but the date was not determined.

The libretto for Brokeback Mountain was written by Annie Proulx herself, following a period of persuasion to take on a medium she had never attempted. The wisdom of such a collaboration was borne out by the results: in language distilled to that which can be sung onstage, the story’s details and themes remain intact, but the method of its telling required significant changes. The dates of the opera are below, and Brokies are meeting in NYC to attend.

The London stage production of Brokeback Mountain is officially underway. The show, which was first announced in 2015, is based on the short story of the same name, which was later adapted into a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

We all know the story by now. In 1963, two young men, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a remote grazing range on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Unexpectedly, alone in the wilderness, they form an intense emotional and physical bond that will change their lives forever. And over the next twenty years, as their separate lives play out through marriages, children and dead-end jobs, they long to be together, back on Brokeback Mountain, in a place where there are no secrets, only each other.

The show's official Twitter account posted an image of the script, revealing that production is underway.

The composer Charles Wuorinen should be in good spirits. The San Francisco Symphony recently gave the premiere of a colorful new orchestral work. He is currently writing a ballet score, and just finished a string trio. Organizations large and small continue to commission Mr. Wuorinen, expanding a catalog of more than 270 pieces. New York City Opera will present the American premiere of his “Brokeback Mountain” on May 31, a little more than a week before his 80th birthday.

But on an April visit to the Upper West Side brownstone he shares with his husband and manager, Howard Stokar, Mr. Wuorinen was characteristically carping.

“One doesn’t like the feeling of being just a placeholder,” he said of the City Opera production, which fills the company’s annual Pride Month slot for an L.G.B.T.-themed work. “If this didn’t work out, they would — I know they would — plug another damn thing in the same supposed connection.”

When Cornelius Mabin first told his parents he was gay, they took him to the doctor. The doctor told his parents their son needed surgery to remove whatever it was that made him attracted to men. Mabin, a teenager at the time, stormed out of the clinic. "I told them 'That doctor is a quack, and there's nothing medically wrong with me,'" he said.

That was in the early 1980s, just as doctors were taking notice of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Since then, testing and treatment for AIDS and HIV have improved, and medical professionals don't think surgery can change sexuality. Still, stigma and a lack of education keep Arkansans, especially those in rural areas, from getting screened for the human immunodeficiency virus, experts say.

Disease detectives for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met last month to discuss new findings. One in rural West Virginia showed that, despite the explosion of opioid use in the nation and the use of needles in drug abuse, HIV is more commonly spread among men through sexual contact.

Dr. Mary Evans, a researcher for the CDC who specializes in HIV/AIDS, began work in West Virginia when the state health department asked for help. The department had detected an increase in HIV diagnoses in three counties. Evans' research expanded on that to include 12 nearby counties.

In the 1970s, coalitions of Bay Area women started the first feminist credit unions, domestic violence shelters and holistic health centers. Some of these pioneering women’s stories — and the role they played in shaping the Bay Area’s progressive identity — are household tales. But an equal number of them are stuck in boxes that have yet to be dusted off.

That mission is at the core of the Bay Area Lesbian Archives, a project founded by Lenn Keller, a photographer and filmmaker who moved to Oakland in 1975. As women of her generation grew older, Keller saw that the history of Bay Area lesbians of the 1970s and ’80s was in danger of being lost. In 2014, she and several other women took on the task of saving it.

“Marginalized histories are often not documented,” Keller said. “This means that all of us have a distorted sense of who we are and our history as a country. This history is very important, not just for posterity, but it’s important for us now. It helps us understand how we got to where we are, and helps us understand how to deal with the challenges.”

Charli XCX has responded to the controversy surrounding "Girls," her collaboration with Rita Ora, Cardi B and Bebe Rexha. The pop single, released earlier this month, came under fire for its depiction of bisexuality.

The singer shared her feelings about the track with Rolling Stone before opening for Taylor Swift on the Reputation Stadium Tour in Denver Friday night (May 25). She said Ora, a close friend, told her releasing "Girls""was the first she's been honest" about her sexuality in her music. (Ora has since come out via a statement on social media and apologized to anyone in the LGBTQ+ community who was hurt by the song.)

"I think the conversation and dialogue around this song is really important," Charli said. "I try so hard to be as involved with the LGBTQ community as possible. Without that community, my career would not really be anything ... I read Kehlani's post, Hayley [Kiyoko]'s post, Katie [Gavin] from Muna's post. I could totally relate to the conversation that was being had. Of course, the intention of the song was never to hurt anybody. None of the artists on this song would ever want to upset or hurt anyone."

Pakistan has enacted nationwide nondiscrimination protections for transgender people. After being passed by the National Assembly and the Senate, the “Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2018” went into effect this past weekend with the assent of the acting president of Pakistan.

The historic measure provides comprehensive protections for transgender people across several important aspects of life, including employment, education, health care, housing, public transportation and a host of other areas.

“This is a truly historic moment as Pakistan joins the ranks of a growing number of countries with nondiscrimination laws that protect the transgender community,” said Ty Cobb, director of the Human Rights Campaign’s global program. “These are explicit, nationwide protections that we have yet to achieve here in the United States. Transgender people around the globe face high levels of discrimination, stigma, and violence, and Pakistan has now taken a historic step in addressing this heartbreaking tragedy. We congratulate the transgender advocates and allies in Pakistan who achieved this major victory through hard work, dedication, and undying commitment to fighting for a more fair and just world.”

It’s been decades in the making, but Monday afternoon it finally happened: The California Senate approved a resolution 23-12 that calls on medical professionals to delay unnecessary surgery on intersex infants until they reach an age where they’re able to understand the ramifications and give their consent. The bill will now proceed to the Assembly for their review.

Sen. Scott Wiener drafted Senate Concurrent Resolution 110 after hearing from people who were negatively affected by the early surgeries. It’s not a small thing; Around 1 in 1,500 to 2,000 babies are born with physical or hormonal abnormalities that blur the lines of their sex. Until recently, it was standard practice to surgically alter the baby to fit a certain gender, and the child was raised accordingly. But as interpretations of gender have become more accepting and fluid, this practice has come under attack.

Meet the Gaymers who, as the name might suggest, are members of the LGBTQ community who, well, game. Gaming is growing. As in any culture, there are ups and downs, pitfalls and power-ups. And one subculture is making their name known across the board.

In the next several years, the sector will make waves. By numbers, by influence, by reach, the LGBTQ gaming community is all but guaranteed to make an important mark in the larger culture of gaming. According to Casino.org, the first usage of the noun “gaymer” is traceable back to message boards of the old Internet standby, USENET: “As public acceptance of both gaming and gay culture grew in the early to mid-2000s, so did the word’s use.”

As entertainment-savvy consumers, gaymers are used to seeking out all the angles in their hobby. And like most gamers, gaymers have a unique virtue, instilled in them by hours upon hours of grinding levels. It’s called persistence. Being a gaymer is about taking stock, and keeping score. Of what you’re doing, and where you’re going. The game is what brings Gaymers there. But it’s the sense of achievement — and the solidarity of the community — that keeps them, racking up points.

Years ago, Brokies congregated in Spain to see the opera version of Brokeback Mountain. It was wondered if the opera would go on the road, and appear in the United States. It was later confirmed that NYC would see the opera, but the date was not determined.

The libretto for Brokeback Mountain was written by Annie Proulx herself, following a period of persuasion to take on a medium she had never attempted. The wisdom of such a collaboration was borne out by the results: in language distilled to that which can be sung onstage, the story’s details and themes remain intact, but the method of its telling required significant changes. The dates of the opera are below, and Brokies are meeting in NYC to attend.

The London stage production of Brokeback Mountain is officially underway. The show, which was first announced in 2015, is based on the short story of the same name, which was later adapted into a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

We all know the story by now. In 1963, two young men, Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, are hired for the summer to look after sheep at a remote grazing range on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming. Unexpectedly, alone in the wilderness, they form an intense emotional and physical bond that will change their lives forever. And over the next twenty years, as their separate lives play out through marriages, children and dead-end jobs, they long to be together, back on Brokeback Mountain, in a place where there are no secrets, only each other.

The show's official Twitter account posted an image of the script, revealing that production is underway.

Long time Ultimate Brokeback Forum member and slash links archivist has announced that her first book has just been published. The title is The Power of Two and is written under the pen name of Leigh Vining.

In The Power of Two, Corey Preston has just opened his own gym. He should be proud, but frustrations with his family and his ex-boyfriend keep him from feeling fully secure.

Nick Sanders is running away from his life the old-fashioned way--hopping a train. With all his bridges burned and no idea where he's headed or what he'll find there, he ends up in Redding, California, and in Corey's life.

Corey finds himself intrigued with the mysterious stranger, and hopes to forge a friendship with the young man with the boy next door charm and good looks. As Nick begins letting his guard down and sharing fragments of his life back home where he'd been living a lie and making choices he's not proud of, Corey dreams of more. He falls fast for the handsome stranger, but Nick's baggage and Corey's chaotic life threaten to keep them from happiness.

Some new operas are exasperating because they fall far short of their potential. Charles Wuorinen’s “Brokeback Mountain,” though, is exasperating because it falls just short.

This “Brokeback” comes so close to living up to its promise and becoming a truly distinctive modernist opera. But for all Mr. Wuorinen’s skill and the risks he takes challenging audiences with unabashedly atonal, fiercely complex music, the score often seems relentlessly busy and ineffectively intricate.

That’s the way the opera, adapted by Annie Proulx from her short story about the doomed love between two Wyoming cowboys, came across at its premiere in 2014 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. And that was still my conclusion on Thursday, when New York City Opera presented the American premiere at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

FX takes delight in telling us that “Pose” features the largest-ever cast of transgender actors in starring roles in TV history. And the largest recurring cast of LGBTQ actors.

If that’s all the series, which premieres Sunday, had going for it, it wouldn’t be enough. But that’s just the beginning for the latest show from co-creator/executive producer/writer/director Ryan Murphy (“Glee,” “American Crime Story,” “American Horror Story,” “9-1-1”).

“Pose,” set within the “ball culture” in 1980s New York, is compelling and highly relatable, even to those who are straight and living in, say, Salt Lake City. That’s the genius of the series — it tells the story of minority gay and trans characters in 1987, but in a way that everyone can relate to.

Tanya Saunders, a child refugee from Nazi Germany who owned a West Village bar since 1987 — the last 24 years under the name Cubbyhole — died April 29 at age 82. The cause of death, said Lisa Menichino, Saunders’s close friend who worked with her for the past 18 years, was heart failure, after roughly a year of poor health.

Though the Cubbyhole was widely thought of as a lesbian bar, both Saunders and Menichino preferred to dub it a “neighborhood fusion bar.”“Exclusivity bored her,” Menichino told Gay City News, The Villager’s sister paper. “She wanted a diversity of people. That’s much more interesting.”

In a 2004 profile on the bar in The Villager, Saunders explained, “When I used to go out, I’d always catch a lot of attitude at bars and clubs. I always wanted to open a bar, and I thought when I did, I’d make sure it was a friendly, casual place where people would feel comfortable. I wanted a real mix of people. I live my life that way, and I wanted it in my bar. We’ve got men and women, gay and straight here.”

It took a many-year journey before Jamie-Arpin Ricci learned to reconcile his faith with his sexuality, largely because of social pressures he says still exist today in many conservative churches that alienate LGBTQ Christians like him.

"There was a lot of very painful experiences, often perpetuated by well-intentioned Christians," the 41-year-old Winnipeg pastor says of his youth. "And so as I grew into my identity and began to accept that that was the way God created me, I wanted to work hard to make space for other people who might have a similar journey."

Arpin-Ricci is a father of two and married to a woman he loves deeply. He's also bisexual and leads Little Flowers Community, an Anabaptist- and Franciscan-inspired church in the West End.

Transgender Brains More Closely Resemble Brains of the Sex They Align With

Gender studies are leaving the college halls and heading into the lab. Increasingly, there have been more rigorous studies in how transgender people neurologically relate to the sex they identify with rather than their biological sex.

From genetics to brain activity, scientists are delving into the complicated cultural, neurological and biological aspects of sex and gender. Public discourse can be divisive and often ends up muddling the real scientific inquiry into this subject. It’s a widely interdisciplinary field with many different voices contributing to understanding it in a variety of ways. For example, some people like, Siddhartha Mukherjee, physician and author believes that genes are highly influential in determining attributes of gender and sex identity. He states:

“It is now clear that genes are vastly more influential than virtually any other force in shaping sex identity and gender identity—although in limited circumstances a few attributes of gender can be learned through cultural, social, and hormonal reprogramming.”

Friends and family of Nino Fortson are grieving following the early Sunday morning shooting death of the gender nonconforming Atlanta resident. Fortson, 36, was a member of Atlanta’s LGBTQ ballroom scene and also went by Nino Starr and Nino Blahnik. Fortson was shot near the intersection of Woods Drive and Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway in Northwest Atlanta around 2 a.m. Sunday, according to the Atlanta Police Department.

Police tell Project Q Atlanta that a witness at the scene said Fortson got into a verbal altercation with two men and two women, and that during the argument, Fortson pulled a gun and fired it into the air. The witness said he walked away, but a short time later heard gunshots and looked back to see Fortson on the ground and one of the men limping away.

Fortson was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died of his injuries. Police have not found the identity of the shooter or shooters and are calling it a death investigation.

The Minnesota Vikings are hosting an LGBT summit and fundraiser featuring speakers such as retired Olympian Greg Louganis and former Vikings punter Chris Kluwe. The event takes place on Thursday, June 21 at the team’s headquarters, TCO Performance Center. Featured panels will be Athletes as Allies, the Role of Coaches, LGBTQ Trailblazers and the Power of Visibility: Institutions and Individuals.

In addition to Louganis and Kluwe, speakers will include Nevin Caple, co-founder of LGBT SportSafe, Robert Gulliver, NFL Chief Human Resources Officer, Chris Mosier, the first out transgender athlete to join a U.S. national team, Samantha Rapoport, NFL Director of Football Development, Esera Tuaolo, former player for the Minnesota Vikings and Stephanie White, head women’s basketball coach at Vanderbilt University.

Michelle Williams will star in “This Is Jane,” Amazon Studios’ historical drama that follows women who provided abortion services in the years before legalized abortion.

“Boys Don’t Cry” director Kimberly Peirce came on board in 2017 to helm “This Is Jane,” set up at John Lesher’s Le Grisbi Productions. Lesher and Peter Heller are producing.

The project is based on Laura Kaplan’s book “The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service,” which follows women who provided abortion services in the years before 1973’s Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. Kaplan, who joined the three-year-old organization Jane in 1971, assembled the histories of the anonymous women who are identified only by pseudonyms.

A designer has come up with a new Pride flag that xe believes is more inclusive and progresive. Daniel Quasar is based in Portland, Oregon, US. Quasar identifies as a ‘queer non-binary demiguy’ and prefers xe/xem/xyr pronouns, reports LGBTQ Nation. Xe created the flag following earlier adaptations to the existing, six-stripe rainbow flag first created by the artist Gilbert Baker.

Last year, a flag with additional black and brown stripes was created, to represent people of color. A further design including the colors of the trans flag has also been suggested.

Quasar’s designs incorporates both of these. Xe is now looking to find the funds to create and ship the flags. Xe launched a crowdfunding Kickstarter campaign on Thursday. Within two days, it has raised over half of its $14,000 target.

Should it hit its target in the next 13 days, Quasar will begin shipping flags out to supporters. Xe says the money is being raised because creating a custom-made flag is expensive, and a bulk order will significantly reduce costs.

Tanya Saunders, a child refugee from Nazi Germany who owned a West Village bar since 1987 — the last 24 years under the name Cubbyhole — died April 29 at age 82. The cause of death, said Lisa Menichino, Saunders’s close friend who worked with her for the past 18 years, was heart failure, after roughly a year of poor health.

Though the Cubbyhole was widely thought of as a lesbian bar, both Saunders and Menichino preferred to dub it a “neighborhood fusion bar.”“Exclusivity bored her,” Menichino told Gay City News, The Villager’s sister paper. “She wanted a diversity of people. That’s much more interesting.”

In a 2004 profile on the bar in The Villager, Saunders explained, “When I used to go out, I’d always catch a lot of attitude at bars and clubs. I always wanted to open a bar, and I thought when I did, I’d make sure it was a friendly, casual place where people would feel comfortable. I wanted a real mix of people. I live my life that way, and I wanted it in my bar. We’ve got men and women, gay and straight here.”

Katie Hill, a bisexual Democrat, could be the person to unseat anti-LGBTQ lawmaker Steve Knight in the U.S. mid-term election later this year. During his time in office, Knight has attempted to pass a law that permitted anti-LGBTQ discrimination by attaching it to a defence spending bill, and voted against California’s ban on gay ‘cure’ therapy.

When Knight attempted to permit anti-LGBTQ discrimination, he was accused of “catering to right wing extremists who would turn back the clock on equality.” Although Knight won the 2014 and 2016 elections, he’s only on a three per cent margin, meaning that Hill, who secured the Democrat nomination earlier this week, could potentially defeat him.

Hill has received the backing of LGBTQ Victory Fund, which supports out politicians in their campaigns to gain office. The organisation’s President and CEO, Annise Parker said: “Katie’s victory sets up a general election battle between her positive, solutions-oriented vision for the district and the politics of hate and destruction her opponent thrives on.

When Walter A. Plecker died in August 1947, his “death was considered a gift by many,” writes historian Arica L. Coleman in her searing history, That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia. “It marked the end of one of the most virulent, bureaucratic, and racist regimes in the history of [Virginia] and the nation.”

Six decades later, however, Plecker’s ghost still sometimes shows his face—most recently in litigation about the rights of transgender Americans.

Plecker was Virginia’s registrar of vital statistics from 1912 to 1946. He played a leading role in creating and enforcing the grotesque racial dictatorship called segregation, which ruled the South from the 1890s until 1964—and whose heritage still divides and degrades the region today.

Today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his city’s intention to introduce a policy recognizing a third gender (“X”) on the birth certificates of non-binary and intersex people. While the New York City third gender policy is set to go before the City Council later this week, it would make NYC the fifth spot in the United States to allow such a gender marker on government-issued identification documents.

According to Time magazine, the proposed policy for a New York City third gender will be considered on June 5 at a meeting of the New York city Board of Health, “with a hearing in July and a vote in September if the board agrees.”

In a statement, Mayor de Blasio said, “Pride Month is a time to celebrate how far we’ve come in the fight for equality, and re-affirm our commitment to protecting all New Yorkers from discrimination. This proposal will allow transgender and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers to live with the dignity and respect they deserve, and make our City fairer.”

A record-breaking number of women are running for ― and winning ― spots on ballots in this year’s primary elections. Of the 92 women who participated in Tuesday’s eight primaries, at least 36 of them have emerged victorious.

Women are likely to be elected governor for the first time in Iowa and South Dakota, and for the first time in nearly five decades in Alabama, according to Gender Watch 2018, a project of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women are also poised to make significant progress in House races: Iowa, for example, may elect its first-ever congresswoman, and New Mexico may elect the country’s first Native American congresswoman, Deb Haaland.

Tuesday’s results were “largely consistent with what we’ve seen in other states,” Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, told HuffPost.

The overwhelming majority of women who ran were on the Democratic side of the aisle, she said, where they have a high likelihood of winning this fall if they’re running in largely Democratic districts

The new show by Ryan Murphy gives us a look at Evan Peters and Kate Mara in their roles as Stan and Patty, a nice New Jersey couple who get drawn into the wild side of 1980s New York City. We see them enjoying a swanky dinner together at the Rainbow Room… but we also see Stan falling in love with a transgender woman named Angel (Indya Moore), so he’s clearly a bit torn between two very different lives.

Pose — which debuted Sunday, June 3 at 9/8c — chronicles the rise of the underground LGBT subculture known as “ball” culture against the backdrop of obscene yuppie wealth in the greed-is-good ’80s. In the trailer, a young ballet dancer named Damon (Ryan Jamaal Swain) is sleeping on park benches until he’s given an introduction to the vibrant, colorful ball culture: “Balls are a gathering of people who are not welcome to gather anywhere else,” he’s told.

2018 appears to be a year of important royal weddings. Before Princess Eugenie marries Jack Brooksbank on October 12, another member of the royal family will tie the knot, and make history in the process.

The Queen's cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, is due to become the first person in the extended royal family to enter into a same-sex marriage. Lord Ivar is set to marry his longterm partner, James Coyle, and will be given away by his ex-wife, Penny, with whom he has three daughters. Speaking to the Daily Mail about the forthcoming nuptials, Lord Ivar revealed:

"I really wanted to do it for James. He hasn't been married. For me, what's interesting is I don't need to get married because I've been there, done that and have my wonderful children; but I'm pushing it because I think it's important for him. James hasn't had the stable life I have. I want to be able to give you that."

A New York Uber and cab driver has found himself out of work after kicking a lesbian couple out of his car in the middle of a trip, reports CNBC. Alex Iovine and Emma Pichl hailed an Uber in Brooklyn for a ride to Manhattan.

"We were sitting in the two window seats with the middle seat between us," Iovine told CNBC. "At one point we turned to each other and pecked on the lips."

That was when the driver, Ahmad El Boutari, stopped the car and asked the couple to get out. They thought he was joking, but realized he was serious when he got out of the car, opened the back door, and repeated his request. They got out, and then Iovine started recording on her cell phone. El Boutari can be heard claiming that their kiss was illegal and disrespectful. Indeed, this could be a particularly strict interpretation of Uber's community guidelines, which state: "Don’t touch or flirt with other people in the car. As a reminder, Uber has a no sex rule. That’s no sexual conduct between drivers and riders, no matter what."

Jason Mraz may have just come out as bisexual. The 40-year-old pop star sparked a firestorm of speculation after writing a love poem to the LGBT community for Billboard which included the line: “I am bi your side.” ﻿

Several music stars have already come out this year, including fellow US singers Demi Lovato and Janelle Monáe. And many fans are saying that the long-time LGBT rights advocate and donor Mraz’s sweet message, published in honour of Pride Month, was him revealing his sexuality.

The “I’m Yours” star first caused fans to wonder whether he was part of the LGBT community with a 2005 interview in which he said that he had “a gay friend I was hanging out with just about everyday. We were basically best friends. It took me about three months before I realised: ‘Oh my god, we’re dating.’

Efforts by the Trump administration to implement a ban on allowing transgender Americans to serve in the military continue to be blocked after yet another court ruling against the policy on Friday. A federal court in Seattle thwarted an administration request for a stay of an earlier injunction that halted the ban while a government appeal is heard.

Judge Marsha Pechman, who according to The Hill is one of four federal judges to have issued a preliminary injunction against Trump’s transgender military ban, issued the ruling Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Last April, Pechman also ruled that an injunction against the ban would remain in place while several lawsuits make their way through courts.

“The status quo shall remain ‘steady as she goes,’ and the preliminary injunction shall remain in full force and effect nationwide,” Pechman wrote in her ruling, quoting Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson during previous Senate testimony, The Hill reported.

Holy Mother of Gawdess, this is iconic. Swiftly rising Aussie queer icon Troye Sivan drops the video for "Bloom," his '80s-tinged bopalong single extolling the virtues and innumerable joys of bottoming, using cheeky floral metaphors to drive his points home. And it's enough to make those of us moving through the world as gender nonconformists (hi!) jealous we don't always have the budget, while also celebrating every frame of this for the triumph it is. "Bloom" is also is a big, gleefully-raised middle finger to the establishment, aka those who simply can't fathom the incredible chicness of it and are thusly, left gagging with no water.

Directed by frequent Vogue contributor Bardia Zeinali and styled by Kyle Luu, the visuals for "Bloom" pull from the handbooks of queer fashion and art greats like Boy George and Robert Mapplethorpe. But the glossy red lip, white shirt, and pinstriped blazer combo with slicked-back hair is so very Linda! As in Evangelista. As in supermodelle, hunty. And then there's the floral dress Sivan twirls around in at the video's climax, pun totally intended. I cannot.

June is Pride month, which means Chicago is ripe with events, parades and rainbows galore in celebration of the LGBTQ community.

For allies, those who aren’t LGBTQ but come out to show support, it’s important to keep the focus on the real meaning of Pride and be aware of when — and in what capacity — your presence is appreciated. Read: It’s not all about your Instagram feed.

We reached out to Greg Storms, youth program director and community outreach coordinator at the Center on Halsted and a member of the LGBTQ community, for some do’s and don’ts allies should keep in mind during Pride month and throughout the year.

At any given point during Ocean’s 8, you might see a flash of an old Anne Hathaway character. Sometimes, she growls like Catwoman. Other times, she’ll make wide eyes like one of her many ingenues. She struts and she slinks, purses her lips and pouts. We should have known what we were in for when we found out that her character’s name was Daphne Kluger—which perfectly telegraphs her as a narcissistic, big-shot actress.

Daphne is an impeccably calibrated Hollywood parody—a woman whose entire being, down to the mischievous twinkle in her eye, is performance. And as several critics have already noted, Hathaway does not merely steal the show—she runs away with it, in five-inch stilettos and a hot pink dress. What Hathaway brings to this caper is precisely what the movie itself lacks: true unpredictability.

Ocean’s 8 is a capable but obvious echo of the Ocean’s films that came before it—and most of its characters fit pretty neatly into their respective boxes. Debbie (Sandra Bullock) is the cool one; Lou (Cate Blanchett) is the cooler one; Nine Ball (Rihanna) is the stoner-hacker; Sarah Paulson’s Tammy is the bored housewife with a garage full of stolen goods. None of the film’s characterizations feel lazy or worn out because they’re all well executed, but it’s hard to make the case that any member of the team brought anything truly surprising to the table. Daphne, too, appears pretty easy to figure out at first: she’s an over-the-top actress who loves a captive audience almost as much as she loves to look at herself in the mirror while wearing a six-pound diamond necklace. Daphne is a woman whose every move is a pose—a quality that only gets more pronounced as the story unfolds.

Dick Leitsch, a titan of the early gay rights movement who led "sip-in" protests in the 1960s, died in New York City on Friday, Ken Lustbader, the co-director of NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project confirmed to NBC News. He was 83. Leitsch became an icon of the LGBTQ movement after leading protests that pre-dated the Stonewall Inn uprising, increasing the momentum of the gay rights movement.

"Without Dick and people like him who are brave, courageous and risked so much when being out was so dangerous, we wouldn’t be here today," Lustbader said.

Born on May 11, 1935, Leitsch moved to New York City in 1959 from his home state of Kentucky. He went on to lead the the New York City chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of the oldest gay rights organizations in the country. It was during his time at the Mattachine Society that he came up with the idea for "sip-ins."

‘Kyare malishu, have kyare malishu, aavta janmare have pacha malishu’ (When will we meet, when will we meet again, we will unite in the next birth). With these last words scrawled on a polystyrene plate with red lipstick, Asha Thakor and Bhavna Thakor jumped into the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad earlier this month. Also among the bodies found the next day was Asha’s three-year-old daughter.

Asha, 30, and Bhavna, 32, met while working in a plywood processing factory less than a year ago. Both had been married for over a decade and had two children each. Had they found love and companionship away from their families? What happened between them is a matter of conjecture but it is clear that after two days on the run, the two women felt that their world had no safe space for them.

The Ahmedabad double suicide has again heavily underlined how the LGBT community suffers under the continued criminalisation of homosexual acts under section 377 of the IPC. Perhaps the worst affected are those who identify as lesbian or trans women. In a patriarchal society where control over a woman’s sexuality is the norm, for a lesbian to assert her sexuality becomes doubly difficult, even potentially dangerous.

Bisexual people would still belong at Pride even if they only amounted to 1 percent of the LGBT community. And yet, even though bisexual people actually “comprise a slight majority” of the LGBT population—according to an estimate from the Williams Institute—many still feel uncomfortable attending a celebration that ostensibly includes them.

“As a bisexual woman who has never been in a relationship with another woman, it’s always hard fighting off the erasure of my sexuality,” Hannah, who asked to be identified by her first name, told The Daily Beast about her experiences at Pride. “When I attend Pride parades with my significant other,” she continued, “I feel as though we get constant glares and rude under-the-breath comments because we ‘look’ as if we are two heterosexual people in a place we don’t belong.”

Hannah is far from alone: Forty-three percent of bisexual women in a 2016 survey conducted by the dating app Her said they felt uncomfortable at Pride, as Broadly first reported.

Kayden Ortiz dwelled on the word. It appeared in a text message from a friend trying to comfort Ortiz, then a seventh-grader at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax County. Until then, he'd struggled to find a precise word, the language, that captured why he felt he didn't belong.

Transgender. It was not a word he would have heard years ago when learning about sexual health in a Fairfax County school. But with a single vote at a meeting punctuated by jeering and shouting, the county's school board this month made a four-word change in language that is freighted with social and cultural significance.

Supporters say the language more precisely conveys that a person's anatomy may not coincide with gender identity. "Biological sex," they argue, is coded language used to denigrate transgender people. Detractors say the changed language will confuse students, condemning it as political sloganeering that values ideology over biology.

This relatively new term refers to a slightly more sexually charged variation of asexuality or the condition in which someone feels no desire for sex whatsoever. It refers to a person who does not feel sexual attraction to another person unless they feel a strong emotional connection to them first.

Think of it this way. Does it take you some time to get to get comfortable with someone first before being intimate? Does a deep emotional connection turn you on? If you answer yes to these questions, then you may identify as a demisexual.

While it sounds like nothing major or out of this world, there’s something deeper going on that is particular to those who are truly part of this sexual orientation.

There are signs that may indicate if you are demisexual. Click the link to read about them

In celebration of 12 Days of Pride, we wanted to shine a light on an ally of the LGBT community. Allies are people who have stood side-by-side with a community they may not be a part of it, but unconditionally support. Jenifer Lewis is a perfect fit for this honor.

With a career that spans over four decades, Jenifer Lewis has been on Broadway, television and the big screen. She is lovingly known as the mother of Black Hollywood but she is also a longtime supporter of the LGBT community. Drag superstar Shangela, who once lived in Lewis' basement and starred in a YouTube series with her, is the perfect person to celebrate this triple-threat diva. In the video above she shares personal stories and gives us a spot-on Jenifer Lewis.

Plus, and you know Jenifer would love this, we got a plug of her book The Mother of Black Hollywood: A Memoir.

Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1898 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski.

The play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall under Yelena's spell, while bemoaning the ennui of their provincial existence. Sonya, the professor's daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, suffers from her unrequited feelings for Dr. Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sonya's home, with a view to investing the proceeds to achieve a higher income for himself and his wife.

Cast members from Richard Nelson's Apple Family and Gabriels cycles of plays will reunite for the New York premiere of Nelson's new production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, running September 7-October 14 at the Frederick Loewe Theater at Hunter College.

The company will be made up of Celeste Arias (Eléna), Jon DeVries (Alexánder Serebryakóv), Kate Kearney-Patch (Marína), Roberta Maxwell (Márya), Jesse Pennington (Mikhaíl Ástrov), Jay O. Sanders (Ványa), and Yvonne Woods (Sónya Alexándrovna). DeVries and Sanders appeared in Nelson's Apple Family Plays cycle, with Sanders and Maxwell appearing in The Gabriels.

This is the heartwarming moment a new police officer asks his boyfriend to marry him - at his graduation ceremony. The beautiful proposal was captured on camera and shared to Twitter by the New Zealand Police account.

It starts with a bearded officer, resplendent in his uniform, asking his partner to come out of the audience. He then takes a knee and asks for his hand in marriage. After his partner accepts, the happy couple embrace while classmates break out cheering behind them. "An extra special graduation at police college today," the police tweet reads.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush has previously said that as an organisation, they look to encourage staff to "use who they are", not "lose who they are" when becoming a police officer.

In an unrelated story, the NZ Police have posted a picture (left) of a special "Pride Police car" that will be featured in the NZ Pride events.

Over a Third of British People Would Be “Uncomfortable” With a Lesbian Disney Princess

The director of Frozen confirmed back in February that they were considering the idea that Elsa from Frozen might get a girlfriend in a potential sequel, however a new survey has found that over a third of British people would be “uncomfortable” with this. The poll was performed by YouGov, and it showed that just under a half of British people would be “comfortable” with the idea of a lesbian Disney princess.

ut of all of the categories put forward, having a homosexual Disney princess was the bottom of the list. Over half of those who responded said they’d be comfortable with an overweight Disney princess, and 70% said they’d be comfortable with the idea of a Disney princess being a parent. When the results are broken down between age groups 67% of those in the age group of 18-24 supported the idea, but only a quarter of those aged 65 and over did.

Idina Menzel – who voiced Elsa – supported the idea of Elsa being a lesbian. “I’m all for it. I think it’s a wonderful idea. It’s a wonderful conversation that we should all have about whether a Disney princess or queen could be gay.” She later added, “I can’t promise anybody that’s going to happen.”

Heather Maxine Barron has been formally charged with murder, torture and one count of child abuse against her 10-year-old son, Anthony Avalos. His murder is believed to be linked to Anthony’s expressed bisexuality, after he said he “liked boys and girls.”

Neither Barron nor boyfriend Kareem Leiva were initially criminally charged after the 10 year old’s death, despite safety concerns and reports dating back several years, which had led to Anthony’s removal from their home until 2014.

﻿However, Leiva was arrested and charged after he “made statements that led detectives to arrest him for the murder of Anthony Avalos,” Sheriff Jim McDonnell said several days ago, at a news conference.

Until now, Barron had not been charged but the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has now released details that she has been charged with murder, torture and one count of child abuse against Anthony.

The star of Jordy Rosenberg’s debut novel, Confessions of the Fox, might be familiar to you already. Jack Sheppard, a legendary 18th century pickpocket and jailbreaker, operated for only about a year before being hanged for his crimes. But in that short span, his madcap spate of robberies and subsequent daring escapes from prison enthralled the working-class population of London. An immediate folk hero, he was immortalized in theatrical works by John Gay and, later, Bertolt Brecht.

Rosenberg, who teaches 18th century literature and queer/trans theory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, felt the same inexorable draw to fictionalize Sheppard’s life as have many artists. “It’s actually not a unique thought that there’s a novel of his life,” he told me as we sat in his Manhattan apartment overlooking the city.

But drawing from his study of London in the 18th century, and from personal experience, Rosenberg knew that he wanted to do something different with the fascinating figure. Or, rather, lots of different things. Confessions is a historical novel, but it’s also speculative fiction, metafiction and a political argument. And the figure at its heart, Jack Sheppard, is, in Rosenberg’s fictional world, a trans man.

The 19th-century British feminist Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy may not have identified as asexual — the term used to describe people who experience minimal to no sexual or romantic attraction is barely two decades old — but modern asexual activists can trace their history back to her.

Elmy was adamant in her belief that love could be just as pleasurable without sex as with it. Men, she felt, used women purely for sex, an act she described as the “degradation of her temple to solely animal uses.” Her solution was to base relationships not on sex but on what she called “psychic love,” or the “realization of justice, equality, and sympathy between the sexes.” Yet while countless books and scholarly articles have highlighted Elmy and her contemporaries as important British feminists, not a single source dared to refer to them with the word “asexual.”

That is, until earlier this month. In a June 3 post on a Tumblr blog called Making Queer History, 19-year-old Daria Kerschenbaum, a rising sophomore at Fordham University, claimed Elmy as an “early asexual feminist” whose critiques of compulsory sexuality mirror those made by the modern asexual movement. Kerschenbaum wrote that Elmy’s vision of a “psychic love” relationship “bears resemblance to some modern asexual relationships.” The post quickly made the rounds throughout the asexual community on Tumblr, including on widely shared Tumblr blogs like fuckyeahasexual.

You probably know Sugarland — the Grammy-winning country music duo made up of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush — but allow us to introduce you to Sugarl&. It's the same group members singing the same music and telling the same stories. The only difference? That ampersand is there to show that everyone — that means you & you & you — are welcome and accepted.

"I want our LGBTQ fans to know and feel what my LGBTQ family and friends know and feel," Nettles told A Plus via email. "That they are loved and supported and valued and seen."

Throughout Pride Month, Sugarland has been covering Patty Griffin's "Tony," a song that confronts listeners with a story about a gay teen who commits suicide while on tour. There's a lot to celebrate throughout the month of June in the LGBTQ community, but this song choice shows that, while we've made lots of progress, many young gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are taking their lives at alarming rates. As the video points out, LGBTQ youth are twice as likely to consider suicide as non-LGBTQ youth.

He was a larrikin and a movie star, an artist and a pin-up. But most of all, Heath Ledger was a Perth boy who made it big, and left behind an archive of stuff from a rich but all-too-short career.

Canberra fans will soon have the chance to see some of Ledger’s stuff up close, when a new exhibition about his life in movies opens at the National Film and Sound Archive in August. The show will feature film costumes and props, celebrity portraits, personal souvenirs and awards, including the Oscar Ledger won posthumously for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. The exhibition was first hosted by the Art Gallery of Western Australia to mark 10 years since the 28-year-old actor died in New York City in January 2008.

It’s not due to open in Canberra until August, but curators were already busy this week unpacking some of the larger items that will be going on show, including one of Ledger's motorbikes. Exhibition project manager Fred Saunders said there was plenty in the show to keep old and new fans happy, including the costume he wore in Brokeback Mountain, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the film he was making when he died.

Whether American businesses may lawfully discriminate against their gay and lesbian employees is likely to be one of the first major civil rights questions facing President Donald Trump’s upcoming nominee to the Supreme Court.

Experts say succeeding Justice Anthony Kennedy — who is considered the court's foremost champion of gay rights — with a conservative picked from a list vetted by the Republican-aligned Federalist Society could could favor employers.

“There’s definitely a lot at stake here,” said James Esseks, a civil rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who served served as counsel in Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 case affirming the right to same-sex marriage. "Are LGBT people protected from discrimination in a way that most other people in the country are, or are we not?"

Steven Universe fans, you’re in for a treat: The popular Cartoon Network series just honored a fan-fave queer couple in the best way possible.

In “The Question,” a July 4 episode of the show’s The Heart of the Crystal Gems story arc, Ruby, a woman, proposes to Sapphire, another female character. The scene—made all the more picturesque by Ruby’s dramatic entrance on horseback and a stunning sunset backdrop—came after seasons of exposition about the pair’s long-term relationship.

Earlier in the episode, the pair parted ways as Ruby went on a journey of self-discovery. But she came running back to Sapphire and popped the question.

Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar told Variety that the inclusive scene was always part of the plan: “I wanted to really create an image of a queer couple that makes sense together. Usually the couple is a man and a woman. But you don’t show that love can exist between two men or two women. I wanted to create equal-opportunity love stories for children."

This weekend, London celebrates its 47th annual Pride parade. Tens of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets to celebrate the LGBT+ community and raise awareness of the issues we currently face.

Earlier this week, the government published a watershed report about the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, pansexual (those who are attracted to all genders) and asexual (those who don’t experience sexual desire) people in this country. The findings were taken from the largest ever survey of LGBTPA individuals and highlighted many of the reasons why Pride and the fight for queer rights is still as necessary as ever.

But one of the largest issues facing the rainbow community is rarely mentioned. Bi and pan people are often called the “invisible minority” within the LGBT+ community and despite many studies saying bisexuals make up half of the community, bi issues are seemingly underfunded or not funded at all.

Khushi, an Indian transgender woman, never thought that when she challenged a policeman who had grabbed her breast it would set off a series of events that would leave her seeking justice more than four years later.

During a pilgrimage to a Muslim shrine in Rajasthan state, she was arrested and brought to a police station where she was beaten and raped. Adding insult to her injuries, she had to beg authorities to register a complaint.

India has long struggled with rape. The country has recently been ranked the world’s most dangerous place for women, in part because of the high risk of sexual violence, according to a poll of international experts. While violence against women in India has gained national attention – millions protested against sexual assault after a student was gang raped in Delhi in 2012 – many in the country’s transgender community say they feel like crimes against them stay largely hidden in the shadows.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, Ilo was no stranger to homophobia, particularly after a nosy neighbor outed them to the entire community. After studying for a year in New York City and facing the prospect of returning to a hostile environment, Ilo decided that the only path to survival was to seek asylum in the United States.

You probably know Sugarland — the Grammy-winning country music duo made up of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush — but allow us to introduce you to Sugarl&. It's the same group members singing the same music and telling the same stories. The only difference? That ampersand is there to show that everyone — that means you & you & you — are welcome and accepted.

"I want our LGBTQ fans to know and feel what my LGBTQ family and friends know and feel," Nettles told A Plus via email. "That they are loved and supported and valued and seen."

Throughout Pride Month, Sugarland has been covering Patty Griffin's "Tony," a song that confronts listeners with a story about a gay teen who commits suicide while on tour. There's a lot to celebrate throughout the month of June in the LGBTQ community, but this song choice shows that, while we've made lots of progress, many young gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are taking their lives at alarming rates. As the video points out, LGBTQ youth are twice as likely to consider suicide as non-LGBTQ youth.

Someone get Property Brothers on the phone! A small piece of Hollywood — and Alberta — history is for sale. It's cheap and charming, but badly in need of a pricey reno.

The courthouse in Fort Macleod, built at the turn of the 20th century, and featured in both the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain and Emmy Award-winning TV series Fargo, is available to the prospective buyer for the cut-rate price of $230,000.

Not only will the successful buyer purchase a durable brick heritage building, with a little Hollywood stardust sprinkled around it, but the town's chief administrative officer says they'll throw in three jail cells that take up part of the basement.

"The [cell] doors aren't there anymore, but when you go in you're like whoa! These are small," Sue Keenan said in an interview on the Calgary Eyeopener. "You wouldn't want to be spending a night there."

While gay marriage has gained greater acceptance across American society, many churches and faith communities struggle to welcome openly gay parishioners. It's a reality that Amber Cantorna knows firsthand, and the Colorado woman is coming to Charleston on Tuesday to talk about it.

Cantorna wrote "Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out and Discovering the True Love of God," her personal story about growing up the daughter of an executive at Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group that has run campaigns against the LGBTQ community.

When she came out as gay at age 27, her family and church shunned her. She almost committed suicide. Several years later, she has wed, found a new church home and works as a speaker, author and advocate for greater acceptance of the LGBTQ community in the church.

A lesbian couple confronting homophobia, falling in love, and sailing across storm-tossed, death-threatening oceans to be together sounds like the plot of a stirring film—and that is exactly what the Russian Elena Ivanova (not her real surname) and her Canadian partner Meg Stone hope their story will become.

A more complex question is whether they will ever escape the high seas—and how much they want to. Twelve years ago, the women say they traveled 15,000 miles across the oceans on their boat, which they later called Boadicea, “the vessel of freedom” (its real name is different, and they asked me not to use it because "it is like giving people your address," said Elena).

The mammoth voyage almost killed them, they say; yet as much as the sea and its storms have proved perilous, the sea has also proven to be Elena and Meg’s most secure, known home ever since.

Paris Jackson is bisexual. The 20-year-old actress - who has been romantically linked with Cara Delevingne in recent months - told her fans she is attracted to both men and women though she isn't really bothered about labeling herself.

Hosting an 'Ask me anything' session on her Instagram account, Paris responded when one fan asked: "Are you bi?" She replied: "that's what you guys call it so i guess but who needs labels.(sic)" However, she refused to confirm speculation she's dating 'Suicide Squad' star Cara. She replied: "None of your goddamn business."

Elsewhere during the session, Paris - who previously dated drummer Michael Snoddy and was rumoured to have reunited with soccer player Chester Castellaw earlier this year - was left confused by fans wanting to know if her late father, Michael Jackson, was still alive, nine years after his death from acute Propofol intoxication. She replied: "Why do you guys keep asking me this?"

There's not always a lot of distance between celebration and relief. Less than 24 hours after FX announced a second season of the transgender-centric TV series Pose — a ground-breaking show created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals that features the largest recurring cast of LGBTQ characters ever for a scripted series — Scarlett Johansson announced that she was exiting Rub & Tug, a film in which she was set to star as Dante Tex Gill, a transgender man.

The A-list actress issued a statement to Out.com, offering that she had "decided to respectfully withdraw my participation in the project" following ethical concerns about her participation as a cisgender actress. "Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and I’ve learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive."

At the time Johansson's casting news broke Friday, close to a dozen transgender actors, filmmakers, artists and activists were in The Hollywood Reporter's Los Angeles office for a discussion about representation in the entertainment industry. All who were interviewed applauded her decision to step aside from the project ("You are awesome!" said Buck Angel) and many expressed relief that the public outcry on behalf of the trans community had been heard and acted upon.

A task force constituted by Attorney General in May 2017 to look into the affairs of intersex persons has launched nationwide data collection that will record the number of people with the biological condition.

An intersex person is one whose sex characteristics are not exclusively defined as male or female.

Chair of the Taskforce Mbage Ng'ang'a said findings and recommendations of the report will be submitted by October this year. Membership of the task force was drawn from various institutions including Kenya Law Reform Commission, KNCHR, office of the AG and Department of Justice, National Gender and Equality Commission and the Directorate of Immigration and registration of persons.

Its mandate will be to compile comprehensive data regarding the number, distribution and challenges of intersection persons, recommend comprehensive reforms to safeguard the interests of intersection persons among others. To ensure comprehensiveness and inclusivity in the process, Ng'ang'a urged all stakeholders: the intersex persons, their families, the various caregivers, medics, government actors and members of the public to share their views and participate in the data collection process.

Gay Pride has become a celebration of freedom so powerful and well-publicized that the calendar of global events has sent brands’ opportunity antennas into overdrive. While the main parades generate massive on-the-day revenues for local businesses (London saw approximately one million attendees) there’s also the tantalizing prospect of astronomical audience attraction - in April of this year it was reported that if the LGBT community were a country it would have the 4th largest GDP in the world - equating to $4.6trn. From Zip Car to Primark the over-arching message of inclusivity has become aptly elastic. But beyond the undeniable shadow of the bandwagon, for businesses willing to navigate the territory with integrity, purpose and a long-haul attitude there’s a mass of mutually positive opportunities to be had.

The promise is especially sweet as brands become an increasingly vital ally in revising social narratives - arguably more so than traditional politics, considering the environment of which we’re a product now not only blends home, school and work but also a near-constant stream of digital spaces and messaging.

Gold Derby can exclusively reveal that David Harbour is entering the “Stranger Things” episode “Will the Wise” as his Emmy submission for Best Drama Supporting Actor. This installment streamed October 27 and was the fourth episode of the second season for the Netflix show.

In this segment, Jim Hopper (Harbour) thinks he is seeing a vine in the drawings of Will (Noah Schnapp). He digs a massive hole in a pumpkin patch and discovers a tunnel through the ooze. Hopper is worried about Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) putting herself and the town at risk. She uses her powers in the house, and he takes away her TV.

It’s the second straight nomination for Harbour in this category. For the 2018 ceremony, he is up against two-time champ Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones”) and past winner Mandy Patinkin (“Homeland”), plus rookie contenders Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”), Joseph Fiennes (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) and Matt Smith (“The Crown”).

A leading Bible scholar has claimed that passages in the Bible originally permitted gay sex – before passages were added calling it an ‘abomination’. The extraordinary claim from Harvard fellow and Biblical scholar Idan Dershowitz calls into question the text of Leviticus that have been used to justify centuries of religious homophobia.

﻿Leviticus 18:22 states: “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

However, Dershowitz believes the Bible’s teachings on the subject may have once read very differently. Writing in the New York Times, he explained: “Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer." “Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one who worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed.”

Batwoman could soon be coming to the "Arrow"-verse. The CW is developing a series about the DC superhero that would debut in 2019 should it get picked up, according to Variety. News of the development comes after the network announced in May that the character would appear in the annual crossover event between four of the CW's DC shows: "The Flash," "Arrow," "Legends of Tomorrow" and "Supergirl."

In the series, Kate Kane, armed with a passion for social justice and a flair for speaking her mind, soars onto the streets of Gotham as Batwoman, an out lesbian and highly trained street fighter primed to snuff out the failing city's criminal resurgence. But don't call her a hero yet. In a city desperate for a savior, Kate must overcome her own demons before embracing the call to be Gotham's symbol of hope.

Batwoman was first introduced by DC Comics in 1956 as Batman's love interest. She was then reintroduced in 2006 as a lesbian. According to her profile on the DC Comics website, she has "a long history of overachievement" and was an "exemplary pupil at the United States Military Academy" until she was "dismissed from the school for being gay."

There was some outcry back in May over the first Bohemian Rhapsody trailer not having much in the way of gay content. Sure, there was a brief moment of Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury touching another man’s hand, but folks argued that the equally brief moment of Mercury hugging another woman and a context-free shot of Lucy Boynton glancing at Mercury (or someone else off-camera) was proof that Fox and Regency's upcoming biopic was straight-washing its bisexual protagonist.

But it’s not like the first trailer was anything other than a glorified music video. It was a two-minute montage set to “Another One Bites the Dust,” “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You.” It was a skin-deep sell, but it was essentially an announcement teaser that emphasized the music we knew as opposed to the life and times of the man who created those songs alongside the rest of the Queen bandmates. That a brief teaser doesn’t contain “X” does not mean that the movie is neglecting “X.” Besides, it was a fist-pumping trailer that played great on a huge theater screen.

It’s no secret that Mercury swung both ways and eventually died of AIDS which he contracted during unprotected same-sex intercourse. He passed away in late 1991, right as Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr.’s HIV diagnosis (along with the diagnosis and death of Arthur Ashe in 1993 and the death of Ryan White in 1990) essentially brought the AIDS crisis into the (heterosexual) mainstream. Fair or not, his sexuality and the cause of his death are a part of his life and can’t help but be a part of a biopic.

Hilde Hall says she went straight from her doctor’s office in April to a CVS pharmacy in her Phoenix suburb, eager to fill her first hormone therapy prescription. The treatment would spur physical changes in Hall’s body that would reflect her identity as a transgender woman, she said. “I was finally going to start seeing my body reflect my gender identity and the woman I’ve always known myself to be,” she said.

Her elation quickly turned to anxiety when the pharmacist refused to fill her prescription and humiliated her in front of other customers, she said. Hall said she called the CVS customer service line twice. When no one addressed her concerns, she decided to file a complaint with the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy on Thursday. In a statement to CNN, CVS said the pharmacist violated company policies and is no longer employed.

“We also apologize for not appropriately following up on Ms. Hall’s original complaint to CVS, which was due to an unintentional oversight, ” the statement added. “We pride ourselves in addressing customer concerns in a timely manner and we are taking steps to prevent this isolated occurrence from happening again.”

CVS has a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index, which ranks businesses based on their support for LGBTQ equality.

Wade Wilson is a man of many faces. He is morally ambiguous, unquestionably hilarious, and dark-humored — a ruthless mercenary and clumsy romantic with a big heart. He is also happily pansexual, a fact most people seem to ignore or aren’t aware of.

Wilson is sexually and romantically fluid, and according to former Deadpool writer Gerry Duggan, would “do anything with a pulse.” He has flirted with Spider-Man, Colossus, Cable, and Wolverine, has had several sexual relationships with women, has a child, is in love with Lady Death, has competed with Thanos over Death’s affections, and is open to pegging and playing bottom, as demonstrated by the last two Deadpool movies. And even then, actor Ryan Reynolds, who plays Wilson, wants to see more.

Reynolds and the cast of Deadpool 2 were at Comic-Con International in San Diego yesterday, receiving fan questions and participating in a panel discussion. When asked about the possibilities of further pansexual and bisexual representation, particularly on the subject of Wilson himself, Reynolds responded, “This universe needs to reflect and represent the world in real ways,” hinting on more representation to come, possibly in future Deadpool or X-Men crossover movies.

Candidate for Governor Comes Out for the Tennessee LGBTQ+ Community as an Ally

Tennessee House Minority Speaker Craig Fitzhugh was kind enough to give an interview to Out & About Nashville early Saturday afternoon. Speaker Fitzhugh is contesting the Democratic Party primary nomination with former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean in less than a month, and the Fitzhugh campaign strongly believes that Speaker Fitzhugh has a strong chance to pull off an upset.

We asked Speaker Fitzhugh to please explain his views on LGBTQ+ people and issues on camera, addressing his prior stands as well as what he believes today. He did so without hesitation. The transcript of the video interview follows.

JC: How is the campaign going?

RCF: Really good. We have got some wind behind our sail and we are really picking up momentum...we are encouraged. So we’re going 24/7.

As the first of September brings beach season and summer reading to a close, the Junior League of Washington will be helping to put on the 18th Library of Congress National Book Festival. The one-day festival — running from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 1, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center — will attract best-selling authors and bookworms alike to participate in talks, panel discussions, signings and other activities that celebrate books and reading.

Among the prominent individuals who will appear at 2018’s preeminent literary event inthe nation’s capital will be Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, discussing her new children’s book “Turning Pages: My Life Story,” and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, discussing her New York Times best-seller “Fascism: A Warning.”

E. Annie Proulx, author of “The Shipping News” and “Brokeback Mountain” and winner of the 2018 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, will speak on the fiction stage. Meanwhile, on the poetry and prose stage, Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith will converse with former Poet Laureate Robert Hass on the making of poetry.

Following a standing ovation from his teammates, Air Force sophomore defensive back Bradley Kim became the first openly-gay athlete at a service academy when he publicly announced his sexual orientation on Friday.

"I almost gave up my dream of playing Division 1 football for fear of not being accepted by everyone," Kim wrote as part of an impassioned Instagram post, "but today I am happy to say I am a cadet at the Air Force Academy playing the sport I love with amazing people standing behind me and supporting me. I did not think this day would ever come, but I've finally reached the point where I am comfortable and confident enough with myself to say that I am gay."

Kim follows in the footsteps of current Division 1 football players My-King Johnson (Arizona), Scott Frantz (Kansas State) and Xavier Colvin (Butler). According to Outsports, former Willamette University (Salem, Ore.) Div. III football player Conner Mertens guided Kim on his coming-out process.

Two Missouri women claim they were denied housing in a senior community because they are a lesbian couple.

Mary Walsh and Bev Nance of Shrewsbury, Missouri, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Friendship Village, which operates locations in Sunset Hills and Chesterfield, in St. Louis County. The women claim in the suit that the senior living community rejected their application for the Sunset Hills location because of a “longstanding cohabitation policy” defining marriage as “the union of one man and one woman, as marriage is understood in the Bible.”

Together for 40 years, Walsh, 72, and Nance, 68, have been married since 2009. After touring Friendship Village numerous times, they said they paid a $2,000 deposit in the summer of 2016. Shortly before the women submitted their final paperwork to secure an apartment, however, they said residence director Carmen Fronczak called with questions about the nature of their relationship, the Riverfront Times reported.

Sarah Gaugler is a visual artist, model, musician, and tattoo artist. She currently runs her own tattoo studio, Snow Tattoo, located in New York City’s Tribeca. Gaugler also fronts the electronic rock duo Turbogoth. GSN spoke with Gaugler about her art, her upbringing in the Philippines, and what it’s like being a woman in traditionally male-dominated industries.

‘I have always been intrigued by tattoos since I was a kid,’ Gaugler says of her interest in tattooing. ‘I remember, I was in the grocery with my mom and I saw this very striking slender woman covered with tattoos, she wore glasses and appeared to be elegant and smart, and I was just totally mesmerized. I was so stunned that my mom caught my eyes glued to her and I remember my mom telling me “Sarah, it’s impolite to stare.” I think that had a huge impact on me and kind of saw a glimpse of my future through that lady.’

‘I have always been illustrating as a little kid all the way through college. One of my friends saw my thesis which was a children’s book with my signature crosshatching and line art style and said “these illustrations would be cool tattoos,”’ Gaugler recalls.

The State Department Reportedly Not Renewing Passports for Transgender Women

Last year, the Trump Administration banned the CDC from using the word "transgender" along with several six other words: "vulnerable," "entitlement," “diversity," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based."

Now they're reportedly going one step further against the transgender community by retroactively revoking transgender women's passports. Them's Mary Emily O'Hara reports at least two women with U.S. passports said the State Department denied their request for passport renewal. For each of these cases, the State Department already approved the gender change on previous passports.

In one instance, Danni Askini, who transitioned at 16 years old in 1998, said her passport held her correct gender for twenty years—meaning she would have renewed at least once in her lifetime. But this time around her passport was denied renewal on the basis that she "failed to disclose" she was transgender and they would need proof that she underwent a gender transition.

Friends and entertainers from across LGBTQ Atlanta will honor Lady Shabazz during a performance Monday at Cowtippers. The LGBTQ ally and performer died earlier this month. Shabazz, 39, died on July 12 after prolonged health issues. She performed at gay Atlanta nightlife spots and Atlanta Pride but most recently lived in Florida. Shabazz was known for resembling and performing songs by Janet Jackson, but she also had another unique distinction — she wasn’t in drag.

“She was the first straight girl that performed within the drag community and did it successfully,” said Charles Kollock, who performs as Princess Charles. Kollock co-hosted the Drag Races show with Shabazz at Blake’s on the Park. Shabazz was also a showrunner and co-emcee for the annual Starlight Cabaret at Atlanta Pride, and she ran the Flashback Showgirls show at 10th & Piedmont.

It's not clear what caused Shabazz's death, but friends said she battled health issues since moving to Fort Lauderdale a few years ago. Rosalyn Jordan, who met Shabazz in 2014, said her friend suffered from liver failure.

Born in Los Angeles, Jake Gyllenhaal was exposed to the inner workings of the film industry from a young age. His father Stephen Gyllenhaal was a director and his mother Naomi Foner was a producer and screenwriter. His sister Maggie is also an accomplished actor who has starred alongside Gyllenhaal in a few films. At ten years of age, Gyllenhaal landed his first acting job as Billy Crystals son Danny in City Slickers. He appeared in a few smaller roles before landing his break-out role in October Sky, which undoubtedly launched his career.

Though it was a box office failure, Donnie Darko quickly became a cult hit and left a lasting impression on audiences. Gyllenhaal went on to star in numerous features, had his theater debut, and narrowly missed out on the role of Spider-Man in the next few years.

Around 2005, Gyllenhaal received universal praise for his performance in Jarhead and an Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain. The role propelled him from young heart-throb to A-list actor, and he hasn’t looked back since. He’s delivered thrilling performances in films

Matt Tyrnauer was at Gore Vidal’s home in the Hollywood Hills a few years before his death when Vidal suddenly proclaimed that he wanted to see someone named Scotty.

“I said to him, ‘Who is Scotty?’” Tyrnauer told me. “And he said, ‘Scotty was my pimp.’” Tyrnauer, a longtime writer for Vanity Fair who has directed multiple movies, said he asked Vidal to elaborate. Vidal started to describe a gas station on Hollywood Boulevard when Tyrnauer realized he had heard about Scotty before ― and about the gas station.

“Wait a minute, this is the gas station that was a brothel?” he remembers asking Vidal.

Scotty, whose full name is Scotty Bowers, a former Marine, earned the title “Pimp to the Stars” in the years after World War II, when he ran a sex operation out of a trailer behind the gas station. The trailer came to serve as an escape for gay and bisexual members of Hollywood during an especially homophobic period in their industry.

UBF member foreverinawe was surfing the 'net looking for images for a video project, and his search led him to "Oz". Oz is Osvaldo Enrique, a YouTube member who posts videos for others to see. To quote foreverinawe:

He has produced literally dozens (plural) of videos, all 4 to 5 minutes long, sepia-toned with a soft-focus lens, and always about male affection. Most of his photos appear to be decades (or generations) old -- I have no idea where he got them. But his subjects, while obviously gay, are not lewd. They are loving. Astoundingly loving. The very essence of what I want to show in my video. Incredibly, he finds a unique image for every single line in the song, with no duplications. Plus he melds them seamlessly and in perfect synchrony with singer Ray Charles. This guy is fantastic!

Oz posted this in the "About" section in his YouTube page:

I am just trying to express myself and share things I like and enjoy: short videos, music and photographs, especially vintage photos. I am gay and human so this channel is human orientated. I do not make any profit from my posts. Any ads on the videos are put by YouTube due to copyrights. If you enjoy vintage photographs, please visit “in your own words”, providing dignity and wages to rural, HIV+ men and women.

To see an example of his work (recommended by foreverinawe), click the link below to see a video that Oz posted as a dedication: To George and Larry, this is your song, happy 53rd anniversary: “Real love stories never have endings"

Her string of scandalous love affairs with other women made her something of a cause célèbre among England's early 19th century high society. But plans to erect a plaque to honour Anne Lister as the “first modern lesbian” have descended into a row after it failed to include the word “lesbian” for fear of causing offence.

York Civic Society has been forced to issue an apology after the £1,000 plaque described her as “gender non-conforming”. More than 2,000 people have signed a petition calling for the plaque to be taken down on the grounds that it is an insult to the gay community.

Lister, a wealthy Yorkshire landowner was born in 1791. On her aunt's death in 1836 she inherited the family estate, Shibden Hall, which gave her the freedom to live as she pleased. She was known as Gentleman Jack for her love of ‘male’ pursuits such as shooting, riding and dressing in black. She was attracted to women of similar social standing with whom she enjoyed a number of same-sex affairs. Her first love, as a 13-year-old, was her boarding school roommate and “girl of colour” Eliza Raine.

Young men who identify as bisexual are the least likely to have come out, according to triple j's What's Up In Your World survey. The survey of 11,000 people aged 18 to 29 found young men who identify as gay are twice as likely to have come out as bisexual men.

"Sam" identifies as bisexual but hasn't come out to most of his family and friends. "In the media, bisexuality is portrayed in women as quite a cool thing... but I think for men it detracts from their masculinity," he told Hack. "I think that if you're a guy who is interested in other guys that somehow makes you less of your gender.

The survey also found women are twice as likely to identify as LGBTIQ and be open about it. On top of that, more young people identify as bisexual than gay and lesbian.

'Pose' Renewal Is Proof That Transgender People Can Play Trans Characters and Succeed

Pose writer-producer-director Janet Mock addressed the controversy surrounding Scarlett Johansson's casting — and subsequent backlash — in trans film Rub & Tug during her time before the press at TCA on Friday.

"I haven't read the script for that film but I do think that there are certain people who are able to tell all kinds of stories and others who don't have access even getting into those rooms. What I love so much about the existence of our show and our show getting a second season … we have new life to be able to show that a series can cast five trans women playing trans women and there's hundreds of other actors who come on for other smaller and background roles," Mock told reporters. "It proves our show is just one possibility of how that trans people can play trans people on screen and that it's completely possible and that and you don't need a star name in order to make a series and to tell a story that's powerful and impactful and reaffirming."

Pose, on which Mock made history as the first trans black woman to direct an episode of television, also made history with primetime's largest cast of transgender series regulars portraying transgender characters as well as the largest recurring cast of LGBTQ characters ever for a scripted series.

Ever wondered how you might be able to tell if someone’s asexual? Well, you could just ask them. Or you could also look for a tiny little black ring on their right hand.

According to the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), the ace (slang term for asexual) ring is always worn on the middle finger of the right hand. AVEN states: ‘The material and exact design of the ring are not important as long as it is primarily black.’ It’s a phenomenon that started as early as 2005, according to the AVEN website forums.

Why do people wear asexual rings? While it’s not essential, a lot of asexual people wear their rings proudly – even if few people get the reference. Emi Salida, who identifies as asexual, is a YouTuber and a prominent activist. She said in a video posted last year: ‘The ace ring for me is a symbol that I am not alone, even if I feel like I am alone.’

Talking to Lizzo is like chatting to an old friend. Enjoying every giggle, our interview time with the singer went from nothing to something faster than you can scream your favourite line from her latest pop hit, Boys. And for the record, you know the gay boys line is the one that gets us going. But while she’s pure lol throughout, being on the cover of Gay Times carries a great wealth of importance in the next step of her life. Women of colour being represented on a historically gay men’s magazine is important – as she states during one of the more tender moments of our frankly hilarious time together.

“It means so much because the LGBTQ community has embraced me as one of their own,” she begins. “I felt like an ‘other’ for a very long time. I used to get teased for being gay because I was very curious and I would look at the girls’ makeup around me. I remember being like, ‘I don’t care what people think about me’. I was a bookworm, I liked anime, I dressed weird, I was in a band. Nobody liked me, and I just remember feeling so unwanted and unchosen, and I remember at one time feeling like I was asexual, because no one loved me, and I was so confused about myself and my identity for a long, long time.”